Spectacular confessions : autobiography, performative activism, and the sites of suffrage, 1905-1938 / Barbara Green.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Green, Barbara, 1961-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English prose literature--Women authors--History and criticism.

English prose literature.

English prose literature--Women authors.

Women political activists--Great Britain--Biography--History and criticism.

Women political activists.

Suffragists--Great Britain--Biography--History and criticism.

Suffragists.

Biography.

Great Britain.

Spectacular, The, in literature.

Women's rights in literature.

Autobiography--Women authors.

Autobiography.

Suffragists in literature.

Confession in literature.

Suffrage in literature.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

viii, 232 pages ; 22 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

New York : St. Martin's Press, 1997.

Summary:

The only book-length critical study devoted to a diverse array of suffragist writings, Spectacular Confessions explores a neglected well of literary resources which includes prison diaries, letters, pamphlets, novels, journal essays, and feminist histories, produced by militant suffragettes in Edwardian England. Combining literary criticism, cultural studies, and feminist theory, Barbara Green investigates the cultural function of these writings and the suffragettes attempts to make the feminist body visible. Green describes these writings as examples of a modernist autobiographical gesture -- the "spectacular confession" -- that crosses generic borders to blend the documentary with the performative, offering dramatic displays of self-representation. Believing that "who wins the eye wins all", these feminists built their campaign around visual representations and in the process were forced to endure beatings, prison, and forced feedings. The writings of suffragettes such as Elizabeth Robins, Lady Constance Lytton, Emily Wilding Davison and of feminist onlookers Djuna Barnes and Virginia Woolf are examined to reveal how they gave female spectacularity a variety of subversive meanings. In addition, Green links the suffrage movement with women's autobiography and feminist studies of literary modernism. A rare, illuminating volume, Spectacular Confessions is an informative, harrowing, and fascinating read.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [185]-230) and index.

ISBN:

0312172672

OCLC:

37030782